News - Middle East: Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has dismissed the fact that Israel is an occupying entity, claiming that the regime has a biblical right to the Palestinian land.

In an interview with the One Decision podcast about his time in office under former president Donald Trump and serving as head of the CIA, Pompeo claimed that the Palestinian territories are the rightful homeland of the Jewish people.

“[Israel] is not an occupying nation.
 This land, as an evangelical Christian, I am convinced from my reading of the Bible that 3,000 years onto now, in spite of the denial of so many, is the rightful homeland of the Jewish people,” Pompeo said in the interview, which was released on Thursday.

One of the leading American Christian politicians touted to run as the next Republican nominee for the 2024 presidential elections, Pompeo censured the administration of former president Barack Obama for negotiating with the Palestinian Authority’s president Mahmoud Abbas, who he referred to by his nickname Abu Mazen.

“Our theory of the case was this – what is in America’s best interest? Is it to sit and wait for Abu Mazen, a known terrorist who’s killed lots and lots of people, including Americans ...? We said that’s just not in America’s best interest.” he said.

During his term, Pompeo played an instrumental role in an administration that recognized occupied al-Quds as Israel’s capital and moved the US embassy there from Tel Aviv.

Also in the podcast, Pompeo rejected supporting a two-state solution, saying “I’m for an outcome that guarantees Israeli security and makes life better for everyone in the region.”

The former state secretary, in his interview, used the so-called biblical names of the region often used by Israelis to refer to the illegally occupied territory, referring to the West Bank as “Judea and Samaria.”

For many Republican voters who are Christian, support for the Israeli regime is a key factor in how they vote in US elections.

According to a 2017 survey by LifeWay Research, a Christian polling group, 80% of US evangelicals believe the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948 – largely through terrorism and ethnic cleansing – was a fulfillment of biblical prophecy that would hasten the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Every year on May 15, Palestinians around the world mark the Nakba or catastrophe. During the Nakba, when Israel was created in 1948, the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Palestinians took place along with the destruction of more than 500 villages and capturing 78 percent of historic Palestine.

Also, according to Palestinian media, more than 100,000 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli occupation from the time of the Nakba until the end of 2021.

Local and international rights groups have over the years condemned Israel’s excessive use of force and “shoot-to-kill policy” against Palestinians, at the time the mainstream media and Western powers turn a blind eye to the atrocities committed by the Israeli occupation forces on a daily basis.

In May 2022, the Palestinian Center for Prisoners Studies said more than one million Palestinians have been detained by Israel since the “Nakba” in 1948, which marked the loss of the Palestinian homeland.

Also, between 600,000 and 750,000 Israelis occupy over 250 illegal settlements built across the West Bank since the 1967 occupation.

The UN Security Council has, in several resolutions, condemned the Tel Aviv regime’s settlement projects in the occupied Palestinian lands, however, the settlements keep expanding upon order by the Israeli regime which enjoys the full support of Washington.

It is also worth noting that Pompeo’s remarks come at a time Israeli violence against Palestinians is at its height.